Help needed identifying old MFM drives from the excavation

[Josh Dersch]

On Sun, Dec 6, 2020 at 6:25 PM Chris Zach via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:

> As the excavation of Bob's junkpile continues I have finally hit the MFM
> layer. Specifically about 10 5.25 hard disks that look to be old style
> MFM drives.
>
> Vertex V150
> Miniscribe 6085
> ST 4038M Seagate Franklin telecom AT-40
> Miniscribe 3650 HH
> Seagate ST4096
> Priam ID45-H
> Rodime RO203E
> RD54
> Real ST506
> Pair of ST412's.
>
> Anyone recognize what kinds of systems may have used these? The RD54 is
> of course DEC, and I'm guessing the ST506 and 412's were from either a
> Rainbow or a Professional/350. But the rest are weird. Maybe Convergent
> miniframes? Probably not PC's as Bob had a lot of weird stuff.
>

I'd suspect that at least a few of these were from PERQ systems, given
their provenance.  Vertex V150s and Miniscribes were commonly used in the
T2 models.  As another listmember mentioned, Dave Gesswein's MFM emulator
will image these (and can decode PERQ hard drive formats.)

(If you do manage to capture PERQ images, please let me know...)

- Josh